A Push From Homeland Security. To much of Silicon Valley, the government's mandate to improve homeland security looks as if it could be the next-best thing to the dot-com heyday. By Steve Lohr. [New York Times: Technology]
The comparison of the DHS to the dot-com is a more accurate than the article's author admits. Consider the history of Silicon Valley in the last 30 years, first driven by the defense industry, which still provided significant employment even during the early days of the personal computer (the 1980s for you youngsters). And during those years--the Reagan Era--the biggest defense employment driver was Star Wars, a program ambitiously based in high-technology, but one that would never work in practice. I knew people happily making a living in that industry in the sure and certain knowledge that what they were doing would never work. But it was a job, it paid the mortgage, and sent the kids to college.
The defense industry in Silicon Valley died off (not completely), and high-tech computing and high-growth web companies took over as the major employers, eventually driven by false hopes in a premise that wouldn't work: the dot.coms and the era of 2+2=5^2. Again, some people knew it wasn't real, but it sure paid the bills. That bubble imploded, and now we're faced with the prospect of increased employment by another defense industry, this time homeland defense and high-tech security. Which is yet another goal that cannot be achieved through the magic of high-technology, but it could certainly employ a lot of people for a long time, and pay some past-due bills and humungous mortgages, and send some more kids to college.
But here's a twist: the other up-and-coming high-tech industry of growth for Silicon Valley is biotechnology. Which has been struggling with the make-it-big-or-die model of drug development. But what if homeland defense (oh, how I hate that phrase) as supported by the Bush administration depended not just on computing and security technology but on defense against bioterrorism--just imagine the potential windfall with a double-whammy of security and biotech rooted in Silicon Valley. Zowie! Just show me where to invest what's left of my 401k, and point me toward that employment interview line!
10:13:23 PM 
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